


Moving On

by doomteacosy



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergent, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomteacosy/pseuds/doomteacosy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you move on when you're already dead?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving On

**Author's Note:**

> Written on a whim sometime during or after series 2 aired because I'm a terrible person.

He didn’t quite live to a ripe old age, but he didn’t die young either. He didn’t die writhing and in pain. He didn’t die the death he had nightmares about. It wasn’t a monster. It wasn’t his monster. He wasn’t murdered, or slain, or butchered, or executed. He wasn’t eaten alive by anything tangible. He just… died.

It was almost a human death.

\---

It’s Annie who feels it first. She knows the moment it happens. His death tears at the very fabric of her being and she’s left on the floor in tears, feeling as if the core of her being has cracked straight up the center and any moment she’ll fly apart into nothing.

It’s Nina who finds him; cold and hollow, draped over the sofa with an expression on his face that Annie can’t help thinking looks like surprise.

It’s Mitchell’s grief that finally draws Annie from her place on the kitchen floor and over to the scene. Nina’s still standing over him, her hands on his face and his name on her lips, as if he’s asleep and she need only wake him. Mitchell asks her to leave him in peace and she turns on him, the wolf in her voice, “He’s not peaceful, Mitchell, he’s  _dead_!”

\---

Nina’s a practical person. She always has been. She can handle change and hardships. She’s not about to die of a broken heart.

She keeps them alive, so to speak. Keeps them together and keeps them moving. But… she’s not George.

She doesn’t keep them human.

Annie nearly disappears that year.

(As to Mitchell… Secretly Nina is almost thankful that they nearly lost Annie. Looking back she’ll think that it was the only thing that held Mitchell together.)

\---

After Nina dies, it gets harder.

It doesn’t happen all at once and Annie swears she hadn’t noticed it herself. But Mitchell did.

She doesn’t acknowledge it until the neighbors stop seeing her.

“Annie!” Mitchell screams, grabbing her shoulder. “Annie, you’ve got to stop. You’ve got to let them go.”

She looks at him and for a moment she’s fury and vengeance once more. He swears her hand doesn’t even touch his when she slaps it off her shoulder, but knows it’s only wishful thinking. “Let them go, Mitchell? How am I supposed to let them go?”

He looks at her—pleading, stare-into-your-soul kind of look—and she thinks he’s about to cry. Part of her wonders if he’s afraid of losing her or afraid of losing himself. She hasn’t yet learned to shut out the part of her that recognizes how they keep each other tied to this miserable existence.

“I don’t know how, Mitchell. I can't _move on_ with my life. I don't  _have_  a life.”

He puts his arms around her, pulls her in. Tries to show her he understands.

His arms sink in too far, he thinks. And she feels just a little bit too cold.

\---

They settle into each other and find some semblance of normality again in Cork.

For a while they almost manage to lie to themselves.

\---

In Paris she goes to pick up a plate and her fingers pass through it like so much air.

The look he gives her is heartbreaking. Or, at least, she thinks it would be if she could remember what heartbreak felt like.

\---

Somehow he still cracks before she does.

She watches as someone else’s hands put a stake through his heart while he pleads to Annie for mercy, forgiveness, to be put out of his misery.

There's no door for her. There's just... nothing.


End file.
